Poor Vermont Yankee was one of the more unloved pets of the nuclear industry, causing trouble and making a mess everywhere. It’s little wonder they’ve decided to end her (and the state of Vermont’s) suffering – she’s been a liability for years. We kept a close eye on her. What we’ve seen was hair-raising. The escape of radioactive particles during refuelling. In July 2008 the coolant system was leaking 60 gallons of water a minute. In 2007, rotting wood in the construction of one of the cooling towers caused it to collapse - further poor maintenance also led to a ‘reactor scram’ and shutdown in the same year.

That’s one hell of a list. So farewell and good riddance Vermont Yankee. You will not be missed.

Along with the commitments by the Canadian authorities to shut six reactors at the Pickering nuclear plant, that brings the number of reactors listed this year to be shut down to seven. And it’s only February. With more and more new nuclear projects being postponed or cancelled and the designs for the new generation of reactors being found by inspection bodies across the world to be unreliable, untested, and unsafe, this so-called nuclear ‘renaissance’ is going nowhere.

We're a couple of songwriters from Winooski VT, and we are trying to spread the word about a song we wrote about Vermont Yankee. It's called The Ballad of Sally Shaw, and you can find a recording of it on our website http://wavesofadrenaline.comIt's a song that celebrates the efforts of a woman who's been trying to stop VY for a long time. Sally considers herself a Vermonter in the spirit of Ethan Allen, and she is not afraid to speak up, or act out in order to make her point. Not long ago, she was actually censured for a stunt she pulled with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. She brought some garden compost with her when she went to testify, and sprinkled some of it on the table and into the water glasses of the regulators. They appeared shocked. She wondered aloud why ever they objected to Spent Fuel in their drinking water, when they did not seem to have any problem putting it into hers. Anyway, it sounded like a folk song to us -- so we wrote one.
You can find the lyrics and a recording on the website....